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The 2024 Black Quaker Lives Matter Film Festival & Forum "The Bayard Rustin Legacy Forum"

RELATED PROJECTS The China-Africa-Russia Project This project studies and facilitates training and education programs between African countries on the one hand and China, Russia, and USA on the other hand. The BlackFilm Project The BlackFilm Project is an independent, transnational, non-profit cultural and educational organization dedicated to using film and other visual media and moving images to foster understanding, respect, and appreciation of the people, cultures, and societies of Africa and the African Diaspora, past and present. To carry our mission, we are committed to developing and implementing programs and festivals at universities, schools, museums, libraries, and other non-theatrical venues in the Americas, in Europe, in Asia, and in Africa. We are interested in improving the quality of Film, African American, African-Diasporic, Transnational, and Educational Studies throughout the world, both for the general public and for specialized, university audiences. Worldwide Collaborators and Clients as Lecturer, Programmer, Curator, and Consultant ​ Harvard University Yale University Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Madison Ohio State University University of Redlands, CA College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, ME Weber State University, Utah University of Chicago University of Washington, Seattle University of Pennsylvania Temple University Howard University Virginia Union University Clarke-Atlanta University Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA Denver International Film Festival University of Colorado - Denver University of Denver DePaw Univeristy Princeton University Haverford College, PA Rutgers University, New Brunswick Rutgers University, Newark Rutgers University, Camden Goddard College, VT Talladeega College, AL Vorhees College, SC Harvard Film Archive Bowdoin College, ME Boston University Vermont International Film Festival New Orleans International Film Festival Black Film Festival, Newark, NJ USA ​ Beijing Film Academy Beijing University Zhejiang Radio and TV University Sichuan University Guangzhou Foreign Studies University National Chiao Tung University (National Jiao Tong University), Taiwan Xi-an Quijiang Film and TV Investment (Group) Ltd., Xian American Studies Association annual meetings, Guangzhou and Kunming Beijing USA College of English, "Beijing USA Film Festival" Beijing Foreign Languages and Culture University Beijing Foreign Studies University Zhejiang Normal University GREATER CHINA ​ United Nations, New York UNESCO, Paris University of Liverpool, UK University of Muenster, Germany University of Paris VIII-Vicennes/St. Denis, France McGill University, Canada Amiens International Film Festival, France Festival des 3 Continents, Nantes, France Zanzibar International Film Festival, Tanzania FESPACO (Pan-African Film Festival), Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso Carthage International Film Festival, Tunisia African Film Festival, Montreal, Canada Laval University, Quebec City, Canada Commenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia University of Montreal, Canada University of Toronto, Canada McMasters University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada TADIA International Conference on the African Presence in Asia, Goa, India University of Dakar, Senegal Sir Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada Dapper Museum, Paris Afro-Caribbean Festival, Veracruz, Mexico African Film Festival, Carlow, Ireland Nordic Art School, Kokolo, Finland Polytechnic University, Finland European Committee on African American Research (CAAR), UK and Germany Quai Branly Museum, Paris Various universities in Turkey, Germany University of Innsbruck, Austria European American Studies Association, University of Graz, Austria Festival Afro-Caribeno, Veracruz, Mexico CIDOC (Ivan Illich), Cuernavaca. Mexico 50th Anniversary Conference, First World Festival of Black Arts, Dakar, Senegal INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND EUROPE, AFRICA, ASIA, and THE AMERICAS: ​ Paul Robeson House Story Paul Robeson House Story - Dr. Harold Weaver 00:00 / 00:00

Dr. Harold (Hal) Weaver Photo courtesy of John Meyer. Dr. Harold (Hal) D. Weaver is an Associate at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, and the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Hal spent his earliest days on a small Black college campus in Savannah, GA, later moving to Pennsylvania and attending Westtown School and Haverford College. From his early experience in Communist Moscow as a member of an official USSR-USA young adult exchange group, Hal has been a lifelong cultural ambassador. He has traveled the world breaking down barriers and building bridges between cultures, often using film as the medium through The BlackFilm Project and the China-Africa-Russia Project. A pioneer in Africana studies, he founded and chaired the Africana Studies Department at Rutgers. Last fall, Hal continued his mission to correct Cold War historiography by delivering lectures in Moscow, the UK, and Istanbul, on Paul Robeson, African decolonization, African students in the USSR, and his own transnational experiences in cultural diplomacy. He has procured the following honors throughout his academic career: Judith Weller Harvey Quaker Scholar, Guilford College, and Cadbury Scholar, Pendle Hill, 2019. Associate, Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research at Harvard University. Associate, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. Hal continues to break down barriers within the Religious Society of Friends, too, with his ministry, The BlackQuaker Project, one of the fruits of which was the publication of Black Fire: African-American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights (2011), which Hal edited with Paul Kriese and Stephen W. Angell. A member of Wellesley Friends Meeting, Hal is active locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally among Quakers. He has served in governance roles with the Quaker United Nations Office, the American Friends Service Committee, Pendle Hill, Cambridge Friends School, and the Friends World Committee for Consultation.

Pendle Hill | May 2018 After spending six weeks at Pendle Hill working on his memoirs, Hal presented a talk entitled: "Black Fire: An African American Quaker Seeker-Activist in a White Supremacist Nation." The talk encompassed aspects of Hal's life that will be discussed in his upcoming memoirs, such as his transnational diplomacy, Quaker ministry, academic pursuits and accomplishments, and activism. A recording of his talk is available above, along with the Powerpoint that accompanied his talk. You are encouraged to listen to the quartet of Paul Robeson songs before viewing the presentation. Paul Robeson Song Quartet - 00:00 / 00:00 Slide02 Slide36 1/36

PUBLICATIONS Black Fire: African American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights Black Fire: African American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights (2011), edited by Harold D. Weaver, Jr., Paul Kriese, Stephen W. Angell, and Anne Steere Nash. Philadelphia: Quaker Press of FGC, 2011. "Black Fire is a landmark book that reframes our understanding of Quakerism, for it highlights the degree to which American Quakers were interracial almost from the outset, with black leaders shaping Friends' spiritual and reform visions. Brilliantly conceived and beautifully edited, it should be required reading for anyone interested in American religion and reform." -- John Stauffer (Chair of History of American Civilization at Harvard University) "'No country can tell its history truthfully until all its scrolls are unrolled.' ... In Black Fire , as these narratives unfurl, the reader gets a close look at the broad diversity within the black Quaker experience.... For nearly a century, historians and philosophers... have struggled to understand and interpret the many moving parts of face relations, religion, and social justice. Black Fire presents some of those moving parts of the history relating to the Religious Society of Friends, unrolling some new scrolls and offering us new foundations from which to continue to explore African American stories, Quaker stories, and the intersections between the two." -- Emma Lapsansky-Werner (Emeritus Professor of History of the Quaker Collection at Haverford College) "Black Fire is a unique, much-needed contribution to the continuing conversation about religion and race in the United States, and the place of Quakers in it. The editors have created what may well be the definitive anthology." -- Thomas Hamm (Quaker historian and Professor of History at Earlham College) Black Fire Book Launch , March 6th, 2011 Facing Unbearable Truths "Facing Unbearable Truths," (2008) presented 4th month, 2008, by Dr. Harold Weaver, with an introduction by Ann Cook-Frantz. Beacon Hill Friends House Weed Lecture. Race, Systemic Violence, and Retrospective Justice: An African American Quaker Scholar-Activist Challenges Conventional Narratives Dr. Harold Weaver of the BlackQuaker Project asks Friends to look at societal problems through new lenses: confronting systemic violence with antiviolence; acknowledging institutional and systemic racism, rather than merely individual racism; considering a retrospective justice program that compensates for and helps remove the historical inequities related to the transatlantic slave trade, chattel slavery, and their legacies – Jim Crowism, other forms of dehumanization and exploitation, police brutality, and the school-to-prison pipeline. This unjust world is maintained by misinformation and disinformation in the media, formal education, scholarship, and political discourse. Hal Weaver lays out steps and queries in this pamphlet to guide Friends and others to begin addressing these concerns in the wider world. Pendle Hill Pamphlet #465 October 2020 Purchase The Red and the Black: The Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic (2021) Read Dr. Weaver's chapter here! ONLINE ARTICLES FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS "A Proposed Plan of Action for Friends: Education & Justice, " by Dr. Harold (Hal) Weaver for The Freedom & Justice Crier (Issue #21, Summer 2009). Article begins on page 3. Read here. "Working Draft from the Ad Hoc Committee for a Justice Testimony," by Dr. Harold (Hal) Weaver for The Freedom & Justice Crier (Issue #20, Winter-Spring 2009). Article begins on page 10. Read here. Hal is currently working on his memoirs, Black Fire: An African American Quaker Seeker-Activist in a White-Supremacist Nation, which will become Volume 2 of the trilogy. Planning has begun on Volume 3 of the anthology Black Fire , which will include writings by contemporary Quakers of color worldwide. "A Proposed Plan for Retrospective Justice," by Dr. Harold (Hal) Weaver for Friends Journal (Published January 3, 2021). Read here.

Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia | New York University | November 2020 Dr. Harold Weaver presented on his forthcoming chapter, “Decolonization and the Cold War: African Student Elites in the USSR in the Early 1960s,” in The Red and the Black: the Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic. Forthcoming University of Manchester Press, UK, Early 2021 at the "Soviet and Post-Soviet Histories of Race" event sponsored by the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York University. ​ ​

Recordings of Our Past Fora: 12 February 2022 | Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge I Am Woman - Leap of Faith: Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge In this video you will see the following from the 12 February 2022 screening of the Black Quaker Lives Matter Film Festival & Forum dedicated to Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, Director of the Quaker United Nations Geneva (QUNO-Geneva) ​ Trailer for the Black Quaker Lives Matter Film Festival & Forum (Cooper Vaughn) ​ Introduction of program and guests (Dr. Harold D.Weaver) ​ Post-screening dialogue between honoree Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge & Joyce Ajlouny, General Secretary of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). ​ Audience Q & A with our guest and honoree. ​ Closing remarks by Dr. Harold D. Weaver ​ Click here watch: I Am Woman - Leap of Faith: Nozizwe Madlala- Routledge . Click here to view the Webinar chat for this event. ​ ​ ​ 26 February 2022 | Howard Thurman Backs Against The Wall: The Howard Thurman Story ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ The 2022 Black Quaker Lives Matter Film Festival & Forum continued with a screening dedicated to civil rights mentor, preacher, theologian, poet, and author Howard Thurman. Contents : Prelude: African American Freedom Music. ​ Trailer for the Black Quaker Lives Matter Film Festival & Forum (Cooper Vaughn). Introduction of program and guests (Dr. Harold D. Weaver). Post-screening dialogue between Thurman expert Dr. Mary Wade and Dr. Stephen W. Angell, Earlham School of Religion (Dr. Harold D. Weaver). Audience Q & A with our guest experts. Postscript on Retrospective Justice/Reparatory Justice (Susan Spina). Closing remarks (Dr. Harold D. Weaver). Click here to watch: Backs Against The Wall: The Howard Thurman Story . Click here to view the Webinar chat for this event. ​ ​ ​ ​ 12 March 2022 | Mahala Ashley Dickerson Alaska On Line: Red Boucher Interviews Mahala Ashley Dickerson ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ The 2022 Black Quaker Lives Matter Film Festival & Forum continued with a screening dedicated to courageous civil rights lawyer, philanthropist, and Alaska homesteader Mahala Ashley Dickerson. Contents: Prelude: African American Freedom Music. ​ Trailer for the Black Quaker Lives Matter Film Festival & Forum (Cooper Vaughn). ​ Introduction of program and guests (Dr. Harold D. Weaver). ​ Post-screening dialogue between guest experts, Johnny Gibbons, law partner of Mahala Dickerson, & Taylor Brelsford, Quaker leader in Alaska (Dr. Harold D. Weaver). ​ Audience Q & A with our guest experts. ​ Postscript on Justice Testimony (Susan Spina). ​ Closing remarks (Dr. Harold D. Weaver). ​ Click here to watch: Alaska On Line: Red Boucher Interviews Mahala Ashley Dickerson Click here to view the Webinar chat for this event. ​ ​ ​ ​ 26 March 2022 | Bayard Rustin Brother Outsider The Story of Bayard Rustin ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ The 2022 Black Quaker Lives Matter Film Festival & Forum continued with a screening dedicated to human-rights-movement leader, author, singer, and social critic Bayard Rustin. Contents: Prelude : African American Freedom Music by tenor Bayard Rustin. ​ Trailer for the Black Quaker Lives Matter Film Festival & Forum (Cooper Vaughn). ​ Introduction of program and guests (Dr. Harold D. Weaver). ​ Post-screening dialogue between guest experts, Walter Naegle, Bayard’s partner and adopted son, and Dr. George Lakey , scholar-activist and Rustin collaborator (Dr. Harold D. Weaver) . ​ Audience Q & A with our guest experts ​ Closing remarks (Dr. Harold D. Weaver) ​ Click here to rent: Brother Outsider The Story of Bayard Rustin Click here to view the Webinar chat for this event. 9 April 2022 | Paul Robeson Paul Robeson & His 200 Years of Quaker Ancestors Paul Robeson: "I'm A Negro, I'm An American" 'WHYY/PBS “Movers & Makers: Joyce Mosley, Family Historian' The 2022 Black Quaker Lives Matter Film Festival & Forum concluded with a hybrid screening dedicated to beleaguered leader Paul Robeson & his 200 years of Quaker ancestors in the USA. Contents : Prelude: African American Freedom Music by Paul Robeson. ​ Trailer for the Black Quaker Lives Matter Film Festival & Forum (Cooper Vaughn). ​ Introduction of program and guests (Dr. Harold D. Weaver). ​ Post-screening dialogue between guest experts, Joyce Mosley, researcher and descendant of the Bustill-Douglass family; Dr. Mark Solomon, eminent historian and authority on African Americans and the Left; and Dr. Harold D. Weaver, Robeson researcher-advocate for over 50 years (Dr. Harold D. Weaver). ​ Audience Q & A with our guest experts. ​ Closing remarks (Dr. Harold D. Weaver). ​ Click Here to watch: ‘WHYY/PBS “Movers & Makers:” Joyce Mosley, Family Historian.' Click here to view the Webinar chat for this event. We are unable to provide access to the film, Paul Robeson “I’m A Negro I’m An American,” at this time. If you are interested in learning more about this film write to defa@german.umass.edu .

2022 Haverford College Alumni Award Ceremony Dr. Harold D. Weaver's acceptance speech (begins at 18:45) Read more about the full 2022 Haverford College Alumni Weekend on the Haverford Blog below:

Race, Systemic Violence, and Retrospective Justice: An African American Quaker Scholar-Activist Challenges Conventional Narratives By Harold D. Weaver, Jr. We are extremely excited to announce our new Pendle Hill pamphlet, “Race, Systemic Violence, and Retrospective Justice: An African American Quaker Scholar-Activist Challenges Conventional Narratives." This pamphlet is now available online at the Pendle Hill Bookstore! Click Here to Order our Pamphlet at Pendle Hill! Our unjust world is maintained by misinformation and disinformation in the media, formal education, scholarship, and political discourse. Dr. Weaver lays out steps and queries to guide Friends and others to begin confronting these concerns in the wider world. This pamphlet addresses the following topics: ​ Understanding the difference between individual racism and institutional or systemic racism. Using active anti-violence to confront systemic violence, rather than passive non-violence. Implementing a plan of retrospective justice to address the legacy of chattel slavery in the Religious Society of Friends and the United States; and calling for a robust justice testimony to begin this process. Forms of Structural Violence ​ MID SEASON SALE SAVE UP TO 50% SHOP NOW Inspired by the work of Palestinian Friend, Quaker Leader, and Human Rights Activist Jean Zaru. Occupied with Nonviolence: A Palestinian Woman Speaks by Jean Zaru (2008)

Dr. Harold (Hal) Weaver Dr. Harold (Hal) D. Weaver is the Founder and Director of the BlackQuaker Project (BQP). Hal was introduced to the Religious Society of Friends and Quakerism at Westtown School and Haverford College, which has impacted his entire life. As a result of his Quaker education, Hal became a conscientious objector while a draftee in the US Army in 1958. He combined his faith and political activism into the BQP, through which Hal has produced several publications important to Quakers: the Beacon Hill Friends House pamphlet of Hal’s 2008 Weed Lecture, “Facing Unbearable Truths,”; Black Fire: African American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights (2011) through FGC Press; and his most recent publication, the Pendle Hill pamphlet, Race, Systemic Violence, and Retrospective Justice: An African American Quaker Scholar-Activist Challenges Conventional Narratives , in Oct. 2020. Hal is active locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally among Quakers and has served in governance roles with the Quaker United Nations Office, the American Friends Service Committee, Pendle Hill, Cambridge Friends School, and the Friends World Committee for Consultation. He is also an Associate at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, and the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. A pioneer in Africana studies, Hal founded and chaired the Africana Studies Department at Rutgers, through which he was able to focus attention on the neglected legacy of the great Rutgers Alumnus, actor, singer, and political activist, Paul Robeson. For the past 50 years, Hal has worked to restore Robeson’s legacy to its rightful place in history, through publications, lectures, presentations, films, and symposiums. In learning about Paul Robeson’s legacy, Hal realized the importance of using film to teach about Robeson’s life as well as how African Americans have been represented in film. Through the BlackFilm Project, Hal screened many of Robeson’s feature films throughout the world, as well as other films created by or about Black people. In 2022, Hal was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Alumni Award from Haverford College, honoring the work of the BQP. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with his life partner, Anne Steere Nash, and attends Wellesley Friends Meeting.

2024 Pendle Hill First-Monday Lecture

Current Activities Retrospective Justice in Healing Historical Injustice and Ills: Reparations Defined as “an attempt to administer justice years after the commission of a severe injustice or series of injustices,” we advocate that Quakerism adopt Retrospective Justice as a model for healing historical injustice. Our ministry is providing education on this call to action through e-newsletters, publications, and collaborative lecture-presentations with Friend Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, a leader in South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement, the African National Congress, and transnational organizations. The Quakers of Color International Archive (QCIA) As a study-and-research collection, our archive documents the oral histories of Quakers of Color worldwide through videotaped interviews and transcriptions. Established in 2019, the QCIA is a partnership with UMass Amherst, Haverford College, and Swarthmore College, currently housed in the W.E.B. Du Bois Library of UMass Amherst. For access to these videotaped interviews and transcriptions of Friends of African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latinx descent, please click here . Reforming Quakerism: Developing New Narratives & Models The BlackQuaker Project calls on Friends to take the following steps: Address the inadequacies of the acronym SPICES, which neglects the testimony of justice and constrains our vision of what Quakerism is and what it might be. ​ Move the justice testimony to the front-burner in the Religious Society of Friends. ​ Focus on structural violence–not just direct, visible violence–as we confront today’s domestic and international conflicts. ​ Adopt a model of Retrospective Justice for healing historical injustice. The Black Quaker Lives Matter Film Festival & Forum Since 2021 we have been programming annual virtual screenings and fora to celebrate the lives and contributions of Quakers of African descent. Held over Zoom webinar, these events are free and open to the public with recordings of past installments available to view on our website. Click on the following text if you wish to watch recordings of our 2022 and 2023 events. Publications We remain committed to releasing e-newsletters, pamphlets, and books that give voice to Quakers of Color, both past and present. To subscribe to receive our e-newsletter, click here. To view a full record of all our past e-newsletters click here . To view a selected list of our other publications, click here . Advocacy: Paul Robeson & Bayard Rustin We work to restore Friend Bayard Rustin and Quaker-descendant Paul Robeson–who has been the focus of over 50 years of advocacy and research by Harold D. Weaver, Jr.– to their rightful places in world history. To view Dr. Weaver’s 1973 vintage video-lecture on Robeson, click here . To view our 2024 event, the Bayard Rustin Legacy Forum, click here . Harold D. Weaver & Anne Steere Nash at Guilford College Harold D. Weaver, Jr and Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge deliver a joint orientation on Retrospetive Justice to QUNO-Geneva Staff Collaboration with Quaker Organizations and Beyond We continue to partner with key Quaker and non-Quaker organizations and initiatives, including the American Friends Service Committee, Haverford College, New England Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers), the Friends World Committee for Consultation, and the Independent Working Group for the extended United Nations’ International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024). Click here to see a full list of our collaborators.